LOS ANGELES—When your regular-season resume includes consecutive losses to Indiana State, Northern Iowa and Southern Illinois, some kind of rallying cry had better be born from it if you plan to become a national story in March.

Play angry. Those are the two words the Wichita State Shockers adopted from one of its famed alumni, Antoine Carr. Carr spoke those words when he addressed the team in February after those three ugly losses.

They were meant to make the Shockers realize that anyone could beat them—a fact the team knew already thanks to those three mid-major schools—but that if they played angry all the time, they could also beat anyone in the country.

That includes programs with rich basketball pedigrees like Pittsburgh, Gonzaga, Ohio State and maybe even greats like Louisville or Duke. The Shockers shook off those potential bubble-bursting losses and stomped their way through eighth-seeded Pittsburgh, the West Region’s top seed Gonzaga, an overmatched No. 13 La Salle squad, and finally they thoroughly outplayed second-seeded Ohio State, 70-66, Saturday night at Staples Center.

This last angry victory pushed the No. 9 Shockers to the program’s second ever Final Four appearance (the other coming in 1965). They will face another Goliath in either No. 1 Louisville or No. 2 Duke from the Midwest Region.

“You don’t have to be better than them 365 days out of the year, but for 40 minutes, that’s all it takes,” Wichita State point guard Malcolm Armstead said as a piece of the net dangled from his new Final Four hat. “If you’re better than somebody for 40 minutes this time of the year, it doesn’t matter. Anything can be accomplished.”

Wichita State nearly didn’t get this chance to accomplish the utterly improbable. Spurred by those three losses in late January and early February, most NCAA Tournament predictions had the Shockers as a bubble team entering the Missouri Valley Conference tournament three weeks ago. And depending on the formula one uses to gauge a team’s chances at making the big tournament, Wichita State was on the outside looking in. A couple wins in their conference tournament and a tight loss to Creighton in the championship won the Shockers a bid, but most didn’t have them advancing beyond a second game.

Critics have chastised college basketball for having too much parity this season, which is another way to say the game lacks a dominant team or top-shelf players. For that reason, when it came time to fill out brackets, casual fans and even experts found themselves making certain picks based on the names on the front of the uniforms and disregarding the players wearing them. And Wichita State is far from a power program.

Yet there the Shockers were on the Staples Center hardwood, waiting patiently in line for someone to pass them a pair of cherished scissors to cut down the nets. They had out-toughed Pitt. They outclassed the Zags. They dominated La Salle.

And with a trip to the national semifinal on the line, the Shockers punked Ohio State. They shutdown the Buckeyes with active defense and strong rebounding. They kept the opposing backcourt in check—Aaron Craft and Lenzelle Smith Jr. combined for 14 points and two assists. They kept ball handlers out of the paint, they made 3-pointers consistently enough and as important as anything else, they took the Ohio State haymaker that should have flattened a team that loses to Indiana State at home.

The Buckeyes slashed a 20-point lead to four with less than three minutes to play. The momentum had shifted, the Ohio State fans’ cheers were deafening and the Twitterverse went nuts with a universal message: Told you the Buckeyes would make a run.

But this Wichita State team didn’t retreat. It is too battle tested to let a late burst squash its dream. Instead, with frantic Ohio State defenders darting at anyone who touched the ball, sophomore guard Tekele Cotton drained a much-needed 3 to push the lead to six. Seconds later he pulled down an offensive rebound that led to another bucket, keeping the Shockers ahead with a minute to play.

In less than 90 seconds, Wichita State had gone from a team against the ropes taking kidney shots to a Final Four participant, a knockout artist against some of the game’s storied programs.

“We never rattle, never,” said Armstead, who was the Region’s MVP with 15.5 points per game in the tournament after averaging 9.8 during the regular season. “It doesn’t get like that for us. We stay calm. It’s not like we are going to fight in the military or anything.”

It definitely isn’t that, but Wichita State is on its way to the Georgia Dome to angrily slay the next waiting giant. It will be waiting under the brightest lights college basketball can shine.

“We are like the Tasmanian devil, really. We don’t fear anybody, we are a strong squad and we fight,” said freshman guard Ron Baker, who went 9-for-9 from the free-throw line. “We had our ups and downs and that definitely showed we can be knocked down or we can beat the best team in the nation.